


The Endless Wisdom of Donna Smoak, The Christmas Ghost (Who Is Actually Jewish)

by angelica



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: 4x06, Donna Smoak knows best, F/M, mentions of Cooper/Felicity, mentions of Ray/Felicity, the title is funny but this is actually kinda angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-05-01 12:38:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5206163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelica/pseuds/angelica
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felicity goes to sleep alone for the first time in months. She gets visited by Ghosts of Christmas. She doesn't even do Christmas.</p><p> </p><p>a.k.a. instead of giving a pep talk, a different version of Donna Smoak comes to Felicity in a dream and makes her see different versions of herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Endless Wisdom of Donna Smoak, The Christmas Ghost (Who Is Actually Jewish)

**Author's Note:**

> This sparked from a crazy idea I got when I woke up in the middle of the night after watching the perfection that was 4x06. I wanted to explore how much Oliver changed Felicity and her life, as much as she did with him.

There are some truths that she has learned from Donna Smoak.

One thing, probably the most helpful thing her mother has ever passed on to her, is the fact that high heels make things better. She is not that short but these days, she is surrounded by giants, all towering over her. It helps to add a few inches more to her height. Plus, it makes her ass look amazing, a fact she knows that is well appreciated by the man she is crying about now.

The second thing is the fact that it is never a great idea to go to bed too emotional. Which is what she is now. She is emotional because that is how she has always been, but she is even questioning that about herself now. Was she someone who cried much before Oliver Queen walked into her office with a laptop and terrible lies? She remembers crying for days when her father left. She remembers crying when she learned that Cooper was dead – but not really. Learning that the boyfriend she mourned over wasn’t dead is also something that happened after Oliver happened in her life… she doesn’t want to question that.

So she ignores her mom and her offer for a warm glass of milk even if she loves it. She remembers being young and her mom bringing her a glass every night. But she is not that young girl anymore.

Instead she huddles the blanket and the duvet around her body, trying to make up for the lack of the warm body that helps her fall asleep every night quicker and better than ever before in her life. The cloths are soft around her, not like the warm, hard body she is used to. She misses him. She knows that they need to talk but she doesn’t know what to say.

Maybe not knowing what to say at the right time is something else that happened after Oliver, too. The rambling definitely increased after him.

She ignores the lights of the city coming from the big window, something she loves about their bedroom, and closes her eyes. She wills sleep to come. It takes a while, but she falls asleep on her own in the bed, sleeping alone for the first time in months.

She hears her name. It is a familiar voice. She knows that voice. She doesn’t know where she is, but she is somewhere and someone is calling her out. She takes a hesitant step towards the voice, then is hit with florescent lights. Her eyes hurt and she realizes that she isn’t wearing her glasses. The voice again. She turns around and sees her mom. Donna Smoak is there standing before her… in baggy sweatpants. Without make up. And no heels. She then realizes what is happening. The woman standing before her is her mother, but not the same woman sleeping downstairs.

It’s her mother right after her dad left them, something she remembers very well even if she can’t remember her dad much. It is the version of her mom when she was too sad to do anything and would just sit at home in her sweatpants and Cheetos dust on her shirt, crying. She wasn’t the same woman now who wears tight clothes, bearing her cleavage proudly out for the entire world to see, who stands on five inches 24/7.

“Mom, what is going on?” she asks, confused. She knows she is still dreaming because she hasn’t seen Donna Smoak without make up for almost two decades now.

“Glad you made it.” her mom says, her voice less chipper than it is now. She is sullen and looks defeated. She looks nothing like the Donna Smoak who walked into her office and started squealing and then told her to put a ring on her hot boyfriend because he cooks.

“Mom, where are we?” Felicity asks again, looking around. They are at a corridor that looks endless. Or maybe she thinks it looks endless because she can’t see well without her glasses. She looks around, trying to make out her surroundings but she can’t recognize it.

“We are in your past. Or more like your future, if you did something different in your past.” her mother tells her, her voice direct and emotionless.

“Is this like _A Christmas Carol_? Are you the ghost of Christmas past? It’s not even Christmas.” she protests, then continues. “You know that we don’t celebrate Christmas, right? Did you forget? We are Jewish, mom.”

Instead of responding, Donna places a finger lacking manicure on her arm and guides her through a door that appears out of nowhere next to them. She is confused and a little scared, but her mother is there and she trusts her. She is the same woman who used to chase monsters out of her closet when she was young. So she follows her mother through the door and finds herself in a place that reminds her of that place from that show she loves to binge-watch.

She is standing next to her mother in a room filled with women wearing white and orange jumpsuits. There are not many windows and the few windows have bars on them. She realizes that she is in a prison.

“What are we doing here?” she whispers to her mother as she sees rather a scary looking older woman walking towards them. She gets scared. “I’m so confused right now.”

“Remember Cooper?” her mother asks, not giving even any attention to the woman who just passes by them without noticing them.

“How can I ever forget?” she mutters under her breath. He left such an unnecessary hole in her heart that she wishes she could have her memories of him erased.

“Remember that virus you were working on back in MIT?” her mother asks then and she gives her a side-eye. They were both kidnapped just months ago because of that stupid virus. “We are in November 2011. You have been here for years.”

It is only then she notices a skinny girl curled up on a small bed. She has dark, greasy hair and her skin is too pale. She looks down and is apparently reading book. A bible, to be more specific. She lifts her head for a second and it’s like the world stops around her.

She is looking at herself.

“Mom, have you been to Central City?” she asks. Her mother must have some metahuman powers. This is not possible. She talked to Barry just recently on the phone and he rambled something about other worlds. So they must be in Earth 2.0, she reasons.

“No.” her mother’s response is simple. “This is you, after things in MIT went wrong. This is you after Cooper gave you up. He hacked into databases he wasn’t allowed to using your virus and got caught. Then he gave you up instead. So this is your life.”

“This is not possible.” She shakes her head and looks at her other version sitting on the bed. “No, he took the blame and he went to prison and he faked his death. He kidnapped both of us, remember?” she asks her mother, getting more worried every second. She wants to leave this place, this version of herself.

“You lost yourself while you were with Cooper. You thought it was love, but he was using you. You even gave up your religion for him.” her mother says sounding like she is preaching her.

Her version mumbles things to herself and she notices that she is reading verses to herself out loud. Her heart breaks out to this girl who is her but somehow isn’t. She looks malnourished and scared. She wants to help her, but she doesn’t know how. She is weirdly proud of the girl, though, for surviving prison for years. She knows it is not something she can do now. She can't be away from Wi-Fi that long.

“Come on.” her mother says.

“We need to help her.” she calls out as her mother starts walking away.

“We will.” she speaks softly and walks to the door they came in from.

She follows her mother because even though she wants to help her other version, she also wants to leave wherever they are at, at once.

They walk through the door and they are suddenly met with darkness. They take a few steps towards the dark. Without her glasses, she can’t see so she grabs her mother’s hand and allows her to lead them. After a few minutes, a brightness appears in the middle of the dark. She knows where that brightness is coming from.

She is in the server room back in Queen Consolidated.

“Mom?” she calls out because that server room doesn’t exist anymore.

She feels her mother shrug. “It’s November 2015. You’re in IT in Queen Consolidated.” her mother explains and then she turns and sees her. She is looking at yet another version of herself. The version of her who remained a plain IT girl. She notices that the plain IT version is a little more fleshed in 2015, then she notices all the empty packages of junk food scattered around her desk, not unlike how she left Curtis’s desk earlier in the day. This version of her seems to be surviving on take out and junk food and not the healthy shakes and dinners Oliver makes for her.

She is still in disbelief as she watches her other version type furiously on the keyboard. She still has the same glasses but there are bags under her eyes. Her hair looks dirty and her roots are showing. “This room doesn’t exist anymore.” she tells her mother. “It blew up when Ray apparently tried to shrink himself. We are still trying to rebuild the servers.”

“It does exist.” her mother offers instead.

“That’s not possible. First of all, Oliver lost the company. Twice. So it’s can’t be Queen Consolidated. And secondly, as I said before, this room blew up.”

“Oliver doesn’t own the company. He never became CEO.”

“He did.” she protests. “He wasn’t great at it, he made terrible decisions, but he was the CEO after his mother was sent to Iron Heights.”

“Oliver died when the Glades went down because he never knew about the Markov device because he never solved the Undertaking because he never had you in his team.”

Her mother’s words come into her ears and her heart falls. “Oliver is…” she mutters under her breath. She can’t even finish that sentence. She looks at the version of her before her through blurry, teary eyes. She is living a life without Oliver Queen.

She knows the version of herself she is staring at very well. It was a choice. She had chosen to be plain. The plain clothes, the plain, mousy hair. It was all a construct for her after what happened to Cooper. She was going to be the plain IT girl, being brilliant but hiding it behind her looks. From where she is standing, that girl looks sad. She knows very well how that girl lives, she had lived that for years before Oliver Queen uttered her name out.

She knows a day in the life of the girl very well. She wakes up earlier than necessary, eats unhealthy breakfast consisting of too sugary cereal and too fatty milk. Her wardrobe choices are limited and that makes it rather easier to find something to wear to work. She goes to work, sits in her office, before her computers, responding to requests from people in the office who are idiots when it comes to technology, then spends some more time in the server room. She sits in the dark, eats her unhealthy lunch alone at her desk. She talks to people only when it is necessary. She doesn’t have many friends, she doesn’t have a social life.

She has enough money but not enough to buy a car and instead she leases one. She remembers the red Mini for a moment. She loved that car but blood stains were almost impossible to remove from the backseat. This version of her still has the car and never had to take a bleeding vigilante who turned to be her boss’s son to an abandoned factory. This girl instead, she goes straight to home from work. Her apartment is plain, consisting of the furniture she bought and assembled herself without any personal touches. It is almost sterile.

She eats unhealthy dinner while watching her TV shows and she plays her computer games. She spends too much time busying herself with fictional worlds. When she feels like it, she tinkers with some computer programs but never for too long. She never wants to risk things again.

She lives a simple life. It is boring.

“You never met Oliver. You remained in IT. You don’t have any ambition to move up, you’ve been in the same position for five years now.” Her mother breaks her train of thought, bringing her back to the awareness of her other version. The last sentence makes her think about how many different jobs and titles she has had in the last three years. The girl before her has had the one job that is way below her skills and capabilities.

She feels depressed. “Can we leave?” she asks her mother. She doesn’t want to witness another moment in a version of her life where Oliver Queen doesn’t exist anymore.

They walk back into the darkness. She catches her mother’s arm again. They come to a large double-paneled door. Her mother opens it and pushes it and the lights once again hurts her eyes.

They take a few steps and she notices the fancy hardwood floors. There is nice classical music playing in the background. The music is so beautiful that for a moment she thinks it is coming from a live band, then her eyes notice an old-fashioned record player with those large cylinders. She doesn’t know where they are but everything looks so fancy and elegant, she thinks they might be in a ballroom somewhere. There are oil paintings all over the walls and she is willing to bet a lot of money that they are all originals.

They walk on the beautiful hardwood for a minute or two until they finally reach the longest dinner table she has seen. It is wooden and elegant and so beautiful and is situated right in the middle of the room. There is a large vase on it, right in the middle, with the most beautiful flower arrangement she has ever seen, with an ornate chandelier hanging above it. She looks to one end of the table and notices a man sitting.

“Ray!” she exclaims. The man she has been searching for days is sitting at the chair, eating. His dark hair is slick and combed back. He is wearing an elegant suit she has never seen. He is silent and she thinks she is alone. Then she turns her head and looks at the other end of the table. There is a woman eating.

“What?” she utters, shocked. She is sitting at the table. At least another version of her. Her hair is in a beautiful updo, she is wearing a diamond necklace and a beautiful dress she recognizes at once as couture. She holds the utensils so elegantly that it annoys her. She has never eaten food herself so elegantly.

She takes her time to examine the woman sitting before her eyes before her mother says something. She looks different though she looks like the most similar to her own self. She is a little older. She isn’t wearing her glasses and her lipstick is too light for her liking. Yet the woman has style. For a moment, she reminds her of Moira Queen, with her elegance, but then she pushes the thought away.

Then her eyes falls to her stomach. “Oh.” she exclaims. She is pregnant. She doesn’t look pregnant, but the belly is obvious.

She is so shocked that she doesn’t notice the voices at first. Then she hears them. She hears children playing, then a moment later, they appear in the room. Two kids who are two years old at most. A girl and a boy. They have dark hair and they are running around, trying to catch each other, shouting things. Twins, she realizes.

“Children, be quiet.” Ray’s voice comes out, loud and authoritative. The children immediately stop. The smiles from their faces disappear. In obedience, they walk to the other end of the table where her other version is sitting. It’s something the Ray she knows would never do. He is a sweet man who rambles like she does and, if she ignores the fact that he stalked her numerous times and never apologized for it, he is socially awkward. He is not the cold man sitting there, raising his voice at his own children.

She is growing impatient and wants to know where they are. “What’s happening?” she whispers to her mom.

“Ray fell in love with you and you felt like it was an obligation to marry him when he proposed to you. You might say you were trying to punish Oliver.”

“Oliver was pushing me away.” she brings up.

“He was in love with you and you loved him back. Instead you married Ray simply because he asked you to.” she explains. “You got married and you were pregnant within the year. He already built his suit and moved on to other things after learning that Oliver was the Arrow." she adds. "He focused on his work. His company was getting bigger and he was getting richer and richer. He asked you to stop working so you did.”

She can’t imagine a world where she isn’t working, where she married someone else just to spite Oliver, but the version of her before her eyes, the elegant pregnant woman, is a stay-home mom, who married Ray even though she wasn't in love with him, it seems. “And she has twins and is pregnant with a third kid?”

“It’s twins, again.” her mother tells her, giving a shrug. “What are the chances, huh?”

“Remind me never to give up on birth control, okay?” she says. She does want to have kids one day with Oliver, if she is willing to admit, but two pairs of twins is not something she wishes on herself even though it happened to another version of her. “Why aren’t they talking? Ray talks as much as I do.”

“Let’s say that you are a trophy wife now, one that Ray already is bored with. He got bored of accomplishing things and having a family with kids. He is sleeping with his secretary. It’s not his first discretion. You know it, but you signed a prenup that leaves you penniless so you can’t divorce him.”

That hits her like a brick. She has seen a version of her in prison, another version of her living a bored life, but the scene before her is the saddest one yet. It looks idyllic from the outside, a beautiful pregnant woman with beautiful kids, living in a lavish home with her successful husband. It might have been something she wished for when she was growing up, living with her mom in a tiny one bedroom they could hardly afford. The dress the woman is wearing for dinner probably costs more than what her mother made in years.

She looks sad. Even without her glasses, she can see it in the woman’s face. She has wonderful kids, beautiful clothes and more money than she can imagine, but she is sad. She is stuck in a loveless marriage, possibly still in love with another man while she is very well aware that her husband is being unfaithful. She looks lost.

At that moment, she comes to a realization that she can actually describe as an epiphany. She is happy now. Even though she feels like being with Oliver is taking her entire life, that she feels like she lost herself, she is happy. More importantly, she realizes that unlike the three different women she has seen, three different versions of herself, she hasn’t actually lost herself. No. She hasn’t lost herself in Oliver.

It is more like she has found herself in Oliver. He brought out things about herself that she didn’t realize she had. He took her out of that IT room and made her a part of something big. Something bigger than the two of them. They are heroes. They are a team, they are partners. She broke into illegal casinos, jumped off planes, came up against big, literal villains ever since he stepped into her office and gave her a bullet-ridden laptop paired with terrible lies. She isn't lost.

She has always been terrified of the men in her life leaving her. Her father had, then Cooper. Yet with Oliver… She knows that Oliver is not leaving her. Even with his terrible attempts, after she had to leave him in Nanda Parbat, he came back to her. Then he asked her to go with him to wherever in the world they wanted. And they did. They traveled the world together, finding solace and comfort and home with one another.

She realizes that she is not her mother, not like the version of her mother standing next to her, sullen and broken because her husband left him. And she realizes that Oliver is not like her father, he is not going to leave her.

They are both newbies in this relationship thing. She knows very well that Oliver never had a serious relationship, especially one where he moved in with a woman, not once, let alone twice. He is sharing his life with her now, first in their suburban house back in Ivy Town and now in the loft she loves so much. And she never lived with someone other than her mother. She didn’t even have roommates back in MIT because her scholarship enabled her to rent a small apartment. She never had been in a relationship where she looked forward to going to bed with someone at night and waking up in their arms every morning.

Yet now they are living together and running errands together and protecting the city together. Sure, neither of them has had good examples of healthy relationships in their lives, with his father’s numerous extramarital activities and her father abandoning his family. Yet she knows they can make it. She knows it because as much as Oliver Queen has changed her life, she has changed his, too.

She is impatient to wake up, if she is indeed still asleep. “I learned my lesson.” she shouts out. She doesn’t remember how _A Christmas Carol_ ended, but she knows her weird dream needs to end. She wants to wake up, thank her mother for appearing in her dreams and then go find Oliver. She wants to apologize to him, then thank him for being wonderful in so many ways and being in her life. She loves him and she is happy with him.

It is true, she has lost herself in him. And it is not scary because it is not one-sided. He has lost himself in her right back. And they found themselves in each other. That's how it should be. That’s how she knows they will make it.

The scene before her disappears. She blinks once, then twice and opens her eyes. She is met with the familiar lights of the city through her blurred vision. She gets into a sitting position then reaches for her glasses. She turns the bedside lamp and is met with what might be her favorite sight. Oliver is lying on top of the covers on his back, shirtless. When she moves, he immediately opens his eyes.

“Felicity.” he calls out for her, his voice groggy and still sleep-laden. She loves it.

Before giving him a chance, she reaches for him and covers his mouth with hers. “I’m sorry. I love you.” she whispers to him.

“I love you, too.” Oliver whispers back before settling his hands on the sides of her waist and allowing her to straddle him.

Another truth of her mother’s is right once again. Make-up sex is amazing.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!! Comments are love


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